Short-cycle methods – Reflecting on the strength and resilience of modern short-cycle methods in research and solution design and development.

Exploitation of autists at work – Organisations are using autism as an excuse to legitimise their approach of confining autists to specific roles and areas within the organisation. Along the way they reinforce stereotypes about what autists can or can’t possibly do.

Supporting the Dandenong Mechanics' Institute with capital and skills – The Dandenong Mechanics’ Institute currently has several capital attainment programs in operation centred around a new development of small frame jet engines of simple and rugged modular design. The Institute has a need for supplementary skill investment.

Urbanism New Zealand was well-attended, and was the first such gathering of urban planners, designers, developers and related stakeholders in New Zealand since 2007. The level of enthusiasm for collaboration and sharing ideas was high, and the chairs and panellists of the conference are working on a results and vision statement based on what emerged during the conference.

S23M and Urban Institute were pleased to represent a modelling and technology point of view amongst a community which is mostly focused on planning and design, and to learn more about the significant challenges facing cities and towns in New Zealand, and some of the innovative approaches used to solve them.

3 March 2018 – proceedings of the 11th quarterly CIIC unconference

The theme of this CIIC event was the intersection of healthcare and agriculture. Participants agreed to focus on the following three topics in order:

The externalities of intensive industrialised agriculture, and the roles of nutrition and urban agriculture in relation to human physical and mental health.— Jorn Bettin, Pete Rive

The opportunities and limitations of vertical farming and lab based agriculture, including the specific question of how we might improve the electrical efficiency of aquaponics and vertical farming systems.— Ira Munn, Jorn Bettin

How can New Zealand agriculture move from unbranded commodity food production to high value products that meet consumers' requirements for high quality ethical food products?— Nic Lees

The workshop started with an introduction to the theme of trust building, which developed into an extended conversation about the detrimental effects of hierarchical structures, deception, and simplistic and distorted notions of intelligence.

Two working groups then focused on the following problem statements in parallel.

Problem 1: In what ways can seed-stage entrepreneurs with a sustainable, profitable business case draw capital-providing stakeholders, that understand first-mover advantages of risk and reward, to their endeavours? — Ira Munn

Problem 2: How do we cope with increased pressure on the public health system, model service level, measure service acuity, connectedness of health services within the health system at a hospital and northern regional level, patient flow, distribution cost, product cost and create an auditable cost to serve model? Benefits – efficiency in service level provided (all departments cannot be serviced at the same historical level), targeted outcomes, i.e. you would not service the emergency department at the same level as an admin block; and saving taxpayer dollars. — Amy J. Newkirk

The 2017 winner of the S23M Award for trans-disciplinary practice is Talia Pua, who is currently in her first year of the Bachelor of Creative Technologies at AUT Colab. Over the course of the last semester she looked into several disciplines, to identify connections and experiment with conceptual blending. Her blog chronicles this journey.

Photo credit: Stefan Marks

Talia and her team's installation at the Colab showcase (entitled CON·TXT) illustrates how technology connects us yet disconnects us:

Professor Littlefair said that "this agreement with S23M is a ringing endorsement of Colab's ability to work with industry and a big opportunity for the whole faculty to gain knowledge of their innovation and interdisciplinary expertise".

S23M and Colab have agreed to:

jointly develop learning resources and lectures related to innovation and entrepreneurship; interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary collaboration, research and design; co-creation; and product line engineering

build on S23M's MODA + MODE methodology, to further research and develop S23M's Cell Platform technology, and to encourage open and widespread use of these tools according to the principles of open innovation, collaboration and knowledge sharing.

Lena Waizenegger provided the following problem statement, which was seen as an interesting way to explore the theme of "the essence of humanity", and to build on the results of previous workshops covering human scale computing:

My focus is on the interaction and collaboration processes of humans and intelligent machines. I want to investigate how work processes and work practices change when human employees and machines work collaboratively to fulfil specific tasks in the healthcare and construction sectors.

The participants noted that the machines fall into two main categories: cognitive assistants and robots. They then explored how collaboration takes place between agents (human and machine), and what factors influence the quality, trustworthiness of the collaboration and systems which support it.

The inaugural Cultural Evolution Society Conference (CES) took place on 13-15 September 2017. CES supports evolutionary approaches to culture. The conference was a milestone event with a programme of close to 200 talks, panels and workshops.

Jorn Bettin and Xaver Wiesmann presented a poster entitled "Designing filtering, collaboration, thinking, and learning tools for the next 200 years", which is related to the MODA + MODE methodology for interdisciplinary research, design, and engineering.

The "CIIC-off" event in Melbourne at the Knowledge Management Leadership Forum at RMIT was very enjoyable.

The themes of neurodiversity and creativity led participants to ask a number of interesting questions that were explored in-depth at the inaugural CIIC Melbourne workshop at RMIT on 18 March 2017, which was facilitated by Helen Palmer.

3 December 2016 – Neurodiversity – The Core of Creativity at CIIC Auckland

At this event, Peter de Vocht gave a demonstration of the semantic search technology he is developing for use in managing information overload. Jorn Bettin presented a keynote (slides) on the relationship between neurodiversity and creativity, the impact of widespread discrimination against people with autistic traits in the workplace, and on the need for radical autistic activism.

Participants then compared two fundamentally different approaches to knowledge sharing and knowledge extraction. The discussion was interwoven with further discussion of neurodiversity and the role of different cognitive lenses in shaping the motivations behind humans communication, as well as the preferred forms of expression and interaction.

Dr. Pete Rive, one of the founding members of the Colab Industry Advisory group at AUT university, presented a keynote talk at the CIIC unconference on 3 September 2016 about the implications of zero marginal cost on the future of human societies.

Participants focused on the following problem statement submitted by Seyedjamal Zolhavarieh:

In the domains of health informatics and clinical decision support systems there is a lack of quality assessment of extracted knowledge for clinical decision making. There are two questions:

Can clinical decision support systems (CDSS) can cope with rare or unusually presenting diagnoses?

Is there a place for barter?

It seems likely that money, and hence financial systems, arose from bartering. How did this happen, how did bartering arise in the first place, and what does it tell us about the modern world/what can we use it for?

Participants agreed that on the one hand values systems are highly personal and may vary significantly from individual to individual, and that on the other hand the social and cultural factors identified by Alan (philosophy, psychology, religion, politics, economics, engineering) have a significant influence.

Jorn Bettin used the domain of sailing to illustrate how an over-simplified language and a one-dimensional measure for progress can lead to a highly distorted “understanding” of a complex system, which prevents any real progress from the perspectives of the agents within the system.

The group searched for a small set of universal values with the potential to transcend the values generated by differences in cultural context. The result is a draft set of universal values that should prove useful in evaluating concrete opportunities for interdisciplinary innovation in future CIIC unconferences.

Our company is growing. We build S23M around the skills,
talents, and passions of the people within our team. The breadth and depth of our service offering
are a direct reflection of the diversity and the capability within our team.

If you are ready to put your talents and passion to work in a collaborative high
performance team, we would love to hear from you!

16 June 2015 – CIIC Auckland

The participants of the CIIC-off event on 16 June 2015 decided to tackle five of the submitted problem statements by working in parallel in two working groups, and sharing intermediate results along the way. The discussions in both groups delivered the following raw results, which will be documented in more detail by the owners of the submitted problem statements:

Working group A

Topics:

What opportunities are there for collaboration between companies in building understanding of how to make progress towards sustainable supply chains?

New Zealand’s contribution to a sustainable world. Many of our exports are associated with our clean green image. Yet our clean performance data shows we’re behind much of Europe, and falling behind. The demand for energy efficient living just isn’t there, especially in transport and housing. Rather than relying on policies, how can industries change this?

Working group B

Topics:

Considering that Deming's deadly diseases of management are alive and well, how do we need to redefine economic progress so that the core of the definition still makes sense to those who will live 200 years from now?

How do we blend human interaction and discretion within increasingly automated business processes? On a regular basis, we hear of serious “business process” failures … failures in the process of issuing consents (Christchurch City Council) … in privacy (WINZ) … in health … in justice … too many to list … and on a regular basis.

What priorities are required for developing Embryonic Industries/SMEs, so that their potential can be advanced and their benefits can be realised within a small economic country like New Zealand? What needs to change to meet the increasing demands in a fast changing global market?

CIIC-off slides

The presentation also includes a few background slides on economic agents, purpose, and learning, and additional thoughts on a useful definition of economic progress. Food for further open space collaboration.

Background:

In order to be successful on the world stage, and to address the social, economic, and environmental challenges that lie ahead, researchers and innovators must create and nurture a collaborative culture that encourages diversification, and that bridges organisational boundaries and traditional research silos.

To nurture such a collaborative culture, and to catalyse interdisciplinary innovation, the Business School of the University of Auckland and S23M have joined forces, and have decided to co-sponsor a quarterly unconference event that brings together academic researchers and practitioners working in the private sector, in particular research and development staff, heads of product development, and individual innovators.

Science without innovation neglects opportunities and innovation without science remains shallow and superficial… Diverse knowledge is necessary to solve various problems in the world and to create value in the future, and overcome challenges that go beyond the framework of research in industry, government and academia.

What is the correlation between official job titles and personal strengths in your organisation?

The key personal attributes and skills needed to succeed in a specific role can vary significantly between industry sectors.
For example:

The role of a manager in a logistics organisation differs from the typical role of a manager in an insurance
company.

The role of a solution architect in a government organisation is quite different from the role of a solution
architect in a software vendor organisation.

To shed some light on this topic, S23M is conducting an anonymous three-question survey on the relationship between personal strengths and
job roles. The results will be of particular interest to organisations that operate complex supply chains and to organisations that develop software intensive products.

The survey has the potential to deliver valuable insights into the core talents and personal attributes that are responsible for the
current and future success of your organisation.

Click here to access the survey. You can also use this template as a starting point for a tailored message to your team.

Please contact us in case there is a need for assistance in communicating the intent of the
survey, or a need for tailoring the survey to the specific needs of your organisation.

Media Commentary

Every sizable and successful organisation has a competitive/collaborative edge, which by definition goes beyond industry best
practice, and can easily be blunted or obliterated by a hasty shift to off-the-shelf IT solutions.

There's a huge learning curve ahead for most government organisations in realising that when it comes to the core mission
of the organisation they will have to develop high-quality digital services.

A LinkedIn employee uses analytics to come up with the popular “People You May Know”
feature. A Facebook team creates a new coding language. They're the data scientists.
Part hacker, part analyst, part communicator, these professionals use analytics to solve problems.
But recruiting these creative data junkies can prove tricky, especially since the specific skill
set they use is absent from university programs. Companies that don't act early to recruit talent
risk falling behind.

The examples of Facebook and LinkedIn are not representative, because these companies are built on big data;
they do not need to address historic data silos. Consolidating and aggregating data across the silos within
an established enterprise can represent a major challenge. A good starting point for them is committing to
cross disciplinary data analysis and product development.
– Jorn Bettin, Managing Partner, S23M Business Performance Consulting